Rob Horowitz: Bolton Paints an All Too Familiar Picture of President Trump

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Rob Horowitz, MINDSETTER™

 

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L Convicted GOP operative Russell Taub and R John Bolton

Today is the official publication date of John Bolton’s book about his 17 months in the White House, “The Room Where It Happened.”  The book's juiciest revelations have already been well-circulated, however, due to advance copies being sent to reporters and book reviewers and Bolton’s Sunday night hour-long prime time interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC News.  

Items such as President Trump explicitly asking President of China Xi Jinping to up the purchase of agricultural products explicitly to help his re-election, telling the Chinese president that he was doing the right thing in imprisoning more than 1 million Uighur Muslims in “re-education camps”, and promising President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he would intervene in a federal criminal case involving a Turkish bank have already been thoroughly chewed over on cable news. Similarly, Bolton’s first-hand confirmation of Trump’s explicit tying of investigations of the Bidens to the release of Congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine is receiving prominent play on television, online and in old-fashioned print editions of newspapers.

As disturbing as these revelations are. what is most troubling in Bolton’s book is not the new information it provides; it's that the former national security adviser paints essentially the same unflattering, disturbing picture of the president as the other top national security officials who have explicitly commented since they left the administration or whose negative views on the president’s capacity to be commander in chief are recounted in Bob Woodward and other authors’ books.

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The consistent view of Trump’s own former appointees-people who worked closely with the president--is that he is unfit for the office, possessing very little knowledge of the key foreign policy issues he is making decisions on, refusing to put the work in to get up to speed, and putting his own narrow self-interest ahead of the nation’s interest. When John Bolton told Martha Raddatz on Sunday night that President Trump is not "fit for office" and doesn't have "the competence to carry out the job,” he was not giving his opinion alone, but expressing the widely shared view of former top Trump national security officials. Referring to the president’s foreign policy decisions, Bolton added, “There really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what's good for Donald Trump's reelection."

In the case of Bolton’s book as with previous critical books or comments by former officials, President Trump and his allies are responding with negative personal attacks, saying Bolton is motivated by greed and just trying to sell books and by bitterness because Trump supposedly fired him. Some Democrats are also pounding Bolton for saving these revelations for his book as opposed to testifying in front of the House Intelligence Committee during the impeachment inquiry (He did agree to testify during the Senate trial but the Senate voted to not call any witnesses). The typical all-around hypocrisy conversation is also getting its usual slice of media coverage with conservative commentators pointing out that liberals who have always detested Bolton are now quoting him as if he was what he has to say is gospel and liberal commentators noting that conservatives who had always praised Bolton are now excoriating him.

But what can get lost in the predictable cycle of attacks is that neither the president nor his defenders push back much on the consistent description of the president as failing to do the basic homework required to make informed decisions. What is remarkable by its absence is any concerted effort to say the president actually does read the daily intelligence reports or that he is up to speed on all the implications and background of the decisions he has made about North Korea, Iran, Syria and other hot spots.  What remains mainly unrefuted is the unflattering picture of a president who remains willfully ignorant of world history and events, makes impulsive rash decisions, and as a result, is simply not up to being commander-in--chief.

For those voters who had doubts about Donald Trump, but thought he might grow into the job. John Bolton’s book is the latest example that there is very little if any evidence that has occurred--and we are all paying a very high price.


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Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.
 

 

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